Page 1 Virtual Advanced Teacher Training Seminar 2020 Participant Guide TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 2 Welcome Page 3 How to Use This Guide Page 4-5 Featured Speakers & Artists Page 6 Daily Schedule Page 7 Preparing to Watch the Performances Page 8 Cross-over Themes Pages 9-16 Performance Resources (listed in workshop order) Amadeus Into the Woods Red Sunday in the Park with George Medea Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Tosca Present Laughter Page 17-20 Participant Directory Page 2 Teaching to me is the sacred profession. My life was saved by teachers, first a Latin teacher in high school, and then Oscar Hammerstein who was a teacher. Stephen Sondheim Welcome to the first Virtual Advanced Teacher Training Seminar! This unique seminar will honor our most revered honorary board members, Zoe Caldwell and Sir Peter Shaffer, both of whom were our most treasured teachers. For thirty years they taught us what theater really is. When they came to Dayton and when we met them in New York City, we knew our lives would be changed. Stephen Sondheim has also been a great teacher to us. We saw the original productions of Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods and later almost all his revivals, as well as producing Into the Woods with our students for our annual musical. He turned 90 in March and, as the world celebrates, we too would like to honor him. There has perhaps never been a time when the chance to look forward to something, to create, to learn or to feel hopeful is more critically needed. We hope this virtual foray into world-class performing arts feeds your soul, fills your cup and inspires you to persevere in the life-saving work of teaching. Adventurously yours, Suzy Bassani Mary Campbell Zopf Emily Gray Muse Machine Muse Machine Secondary Schools Founder Executive Director Program Director Page 3 How to Use This Guide We are delighted to showcase eight seminal works of theatre and opera as well as the lives of three extraordinary artists who helped bring them to life. Featured interviews with four special friends of Muse Machine—and significant artists in their own right—pull back the curtain even further. In order to prepare for these experiences, please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the Guide: • Except for the Participant Directory, all the resources in this printable Guide are also linked on the event website: www.musemachine2020.wixsite.com/virtual-atts-2020. o Print the Guide or refer to it as a digital document. Links (underlined in blue) will take you to the appropriate section or open a new browser window. o We recommend printing page 6 (the Daily Schedule) and posting it somewhere prominent next to your computer. o Performances and their resources are listed in workshop order. • We are pleased to be able to share performances that are available on various online platforms for free or a nominal fee. Please tell us if you have trouble accessing the videos. • Pace yourself by watching the performance videos over the next couple weeks in advance of the workshops. Your Zoom meeting invitation will be sent in a separate email in the first week of June. Please monitor your email for other updates, especially links to the featured interview recordings. The Muse team looks forward to seeing you on June 8! We can be contacted any time with questions or concerns. Please email Emily Gray at [email protected]. Page 4 Featured Speakers & Artists Guest Lecturers Bob Lear John Sheehan Artist Spotlights Sir Peter Shaffer Zoe Caldwell Stephen Sondheim Featured Interviews Michael Maryann Lonny Charlie Pennington Plunkett Price Whitehead Page 5 Speaker & Artist Bios Please refer to the ATTS event website for expanded biographies and additional links. Bob Lear is International Producer of the Global Arts Corps. Bob sees most everything on the stage in NY and has followed the American and European theatre closely since the 1960's, having lived in Paris for 14 years. John Sheehan has directed plays, musicals and operas throughout the U.S., the UK, Ireland and Vietnam including Amadeus and The Seahorse for The Human Race and the Viva, Victoria! Opening Night Gala in Dayton, which was broadcast live on PBS. Sir Peter Shaffer was best known for his hugely popular philosophical dramas The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964), Equus (1973) and, in particular, Amadeus (1979). The last of these, was a highly sought after ticket at the National Theatre and on Broadway, and was turned into one of the most successful films of the 1980s, which won eight Academy Awards including best picture. Zoe Caldwell was, according to Thomas Schumacher, Chairman of the Broadway League, “indisputably Broadway royalty with four Tony Awards and four decades of thrilling performances in work ranging from Tennessee Williams to Euripides to Terrence McNally. Her audiences were struck by her elegance, her strength, and the penetrating timbre of her extraordinary voice. But those of us lucky enough to have worked with her likely equally remember her kindness and beaming smile." Stephen Sondheim is best known for the startling complexity of his lyricism and music. His contributions to West Side Story and Gypsy in the 1950s brought him recognition as a rising star of Broadway. His major works for the theater also include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. Michael Pennington is an English actor, director and writer. Together with director Michael Bogdanov, he founded the English Shakespeare Company in 1986 and was its Joint Artistic Director until 1992. He is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Michael played opposite Dame Judi Dench in Peter Shaffer's play The Gift of the Gorgon in 1992. Maryann Plunkett is a TONY, Obie and Drama Desk Awards-winning actress. She’s toured Europe, China, and Australia with Richard Nelson’s trilogy The Gabriel Family Plays which first premiered at NY’s Public Theatre and was televised on PBS. She was recently seen at the Public in Nelson’s newest play The Michaels and online in his first virtual play What Do We Need To Talk About? Broadway credits include Agnes of God, Sunday in the Park with George, Me and My Girl (Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical), The Crucible, St. Joan, The Seagull, A Man for All Seasons. Lonny Price directed Sweeney Todd starring Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel at the ENO and Lincoln Center. Lonny’s New York Philharmonic credits include Company; Sondheim: The Birthday Concert (Emmy Award); and Passion. His documentary, Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, premiered at the New York Film Festival, and was named one of The New York Times’ top 10 films of 2016. Charlie Whitehead is a Producer and General Manager who has worked at all levels of theatre and film since 1998. His Broadway credits include: The Beauty Queen Of Leenane and The Play What I Wrote. In 2012, Charlie and his mother, Zoe Caldwell, finally got the chance to work on two productions together. First was the film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and second was the one-woman show Elective Affinities, which was Zoe's final performance on stage. Page 6 Daily Schedule Sunday, June 7: Watch the Tonys directed by Lonny Price at www.TonyAwards.com! Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, June 8 June 9 June 10 10:00 Opening Remarks AM 10:30 Workshop 4: Sunday in Workshop 1: Amadeus Workshop 7: Tosca AM the Park with George 12:00 Lunch Break PM 1:00 Workshop 2: Into the Workshop 8: Present Workshop 5: Medea PM Woods Laughter 2:30 Break PM Workshop 6: Sweeney 3:00 Workshop 3: Red Todd: The Demon Barber Curriculum Connections PM of Fleet Street 4:30 Day 3 concludes and Day 1 concludes Day 2 concludes PM Happy Hour begins 6:00 Happy Hour Ends! PM Watch all performances before June 8 Answer critical thinking prompts right after watching Read/watch supplemental links in the days just before the workshop Page 7 Preparing to Watch the Performances Stop. Pour a glass of wine. Choose your viewing device (we recommend your largest computer screen or a smart TV but even your smartphone will do in a pinch). Darken the room and enjoy the show. Easy enough? Seriously, we want your experience with each performance to be the next best thing to seeing it in the theater. Treat yourself to a date night (or eight)! The next several pages do include important information. There are handy reminders about the date and time of each workshop, the runtime and even links to the videos. You will find cross-over themes that relate to multiple performances and 3-4 critical thinking prompts specific to each performance. Read the questions ahead if you like, but don’t worry—there’s no test! We suggest answering the prompts right after finishing each video. Use them to gather your thoughts, deepen your thinking and generate discussion for the workshop Q&As. A handful of supplemental materials are also listed for each performance. Check them out right before the workshop. They will give you a greater appreciation for the artists behind the work. Remember that we are an email away if you need technical assistance. Email Emily Gray at [email protected]. Page 8 Cross-Over Themes As you watch, you will begin to see thematic bridges among the plays and musicals. These questions highlight only some of the potential connections! Theme 1: “A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man” The title of James Joyce’s first novel, above, is an example of Bildungsroman, a literary device that also defines the genre of the Coming of Age novel in English.